Archive for the ‘ENTERTAINING’ Category

Holy Shoulder Pads–Carrie and Co. have released the launch date (May 28, 2010), sneak peeks and the first official trailer of the much-awaited sequel Sex and the City 2–a.k.a. SATC2.

Everyone but your mother appears to be cameo-ing along with the fab four–Carrie, Miranda, Samantha and Charlotte–as the film carries on two years later since the first one sated our appetites for this girl-fest franchise.

From the snippets we’ve read and seen, teeny teen sensation Miley Cyrus as Hannah Montana upstages the un-upstageable Samantha by wearing the same gown (yes, it’s the horror, the horror) to a film premiere, and Liza Minelli sings at a gay wedding attended by the gal pals.

The luscious Penelope Cruz plays herself, and her replacement post-Tom, Katie Holmes pops in all business-suited and powerful as an exec.  It is even rumoured (but please say it isn’t so) that Britain’s glamazon Jordan is auditioning for a role as a sexy British nanny (isn’t this an oxymoron?)!

Back to the posse.

Clothed like 70′s and 80′s fashion crimes by wardrobe mistress Patricia Field in a series of flashbacks, Carrie and Samantha channel Studio 54 with leggings, big layered hair and batwings.  Sam does not disappoint us in a Desperately Seeking Susan kind of way, replete with tie-dye, acid wash and fish net.  Carrie looks like Madonna looks now.  Charlotte, no matter the towering Louboutins, is still wearing Lily P. and peplums like a time-warped suburban housewife.  Poor Miranda, paraded in mustard of all colors, looks less and less like a lawyer and more like a hapless hostess at a restaurant frequented by the gang.

 

Flash to the desert and sand dunes, and the girls look like they’ve found an oasis at La Mamounia after a Bedouin camel trek. Sam is dedecked in a one-piece cozzie with more bling than Tiffany and Carrie is actually wearing a turban!  All this in the name of ‘sometimes you just have to get away with the girls’. (Give us a beach!)

Without divulging the plot, the interviews so far have only served to foam us up once more about fashionistas versus recessionistas, Mr Big and whether there is going to be a little Mr Big and all things Sarah Jessica Parker, channelling vintage Halston, Chanel and Louboutins, natch, below.

There’s bound to be more press, more glittery snippets and even another perfume, perhaps. But for now, we’re hanging on the trailer.

Bring it on, or should we say, ‘Carrie’ on?!

For embellished swimwear

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December 21– the Winter Solstice–the shortest day of 2009, and the one that has the least numbers of daylight. Er, that is, the least number of hours to grab those last minute rays of sunshine before the Christmas hols are upon us.

There may be 12 days of Christmas, but they are going to be dark ones, unless you are in the tropics.

With the Eastern cities socked in by unseasonably high piles of snow and coldy temps as far south as SoBe, any beach-bound lass is grateful for the tingly warmth of winter sun, and the light it brings.

Best place to head is for any tropical latitudinal band, or any land, that sits squarely near the equator.

Hop over to Hawaii and sing ‘Mele Kalikimaka‘ a title that roughly means Merry Christmas in Hawaiian (their 12-letter langauge does not have English phonemes like ‘r’ or ‘s’).

The song written by Robert Alex Anderson in 1949 is a prime example of a style of Hawaiian music known as hapa haole, or half-foreign, meaning in common vernacular, of mixed Hawaiian and Caucasian blood.  Many crooners have made covers of this song, like Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters in 1950 for Decca on 78 rpm’s, Bette Midler, herself a Hononlulu-born honey, and even at one time, The Beach Boys.

Top up the tan, bask in the glorious sun, and count those hours of this shortish day. It won’t be long before the Christmas star shines brightly!

Wear these Hawaiian-print bikinis in Hawaii

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Kikidoll has to confess to an unhealthy obsession with all things Stephenie Meyer-ish when it comes to her runaway-hit Twilight trilogy (quartet, if you count Breaking Dawn????) comprised of best-seller books Twilight, New Dawn and Eclipse, and two films, soon to be three, by the same titles.

The saga follows the travails of tortured teen lovers, mortal Bella Swan and her immortal vampire boyfriend Edward Cullen in spooky, sunless Forks, Washington, about as far away from a tropical beach (and sunshine) that the walking dead can get.

You’d have to be as dead as the ‘cold ones’ or as old as the Volturri not to know about the success of these books and films–the third film due out next summer 2010–and to have not picked your side on Team Edward or Team Jacob yet. Already a smash at the box office, the series has made cultish stars of all its actors with impressive and devoted followings on Twitter and Facebook.

One new supernova is gorgeous Christian Serratos–19 years old, a native Californian who plays a somewhat geeky and awkward Angela. Despite the glasses and weird-kids lunch table antics, no costume or act could mask her svelte loveliness.

No stranger to acting, Christian previously starred in Zoey 101 and in Hannah Montana. She will reprise her role as Angela in the third film Eclipse.

At a shoot today Christian donned pieces from Kikidoll’s new 2010 collection and was photographed wearing Kikidoll’s Lava Leaf bikini. Watch this space (er, blog) as more pieces are soon to follow from the shoot.

After all, today, December 16, 2009 marks the last new moon of this year!

Go, Team Christian!

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Every once in a while a beach girl grabs the world’s canvas–one day you’d never heard of her, let alone seen her–the next day she is the cover girl of your dreams, on every newsstand.

One such dream girl is Bar Refaeli.

From Israel, and gorgeous in the extreme, Bar has graced the covers of Cosmopolitan, Maxim and Elle as well as the coveted cover of Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue 2009 and its subsequent books and calendars.

In July, she was bodypainted with the title and wording from the new Stephen King novel for the cover of Esquire.

Having been squired by Leonardo DiCaprio at the time, she was catapulted into bikini hyperspeed. Seen with Leo at Bakers Bay, Bahamas late last month, there are inklings that the two may have reunited again.

Combining an almost feline set of blue eyes and a lion’s mane of tawny golden hair, she is curvy and womanly, no stick figure Bar. Her freckled, sunny naturalness is the antidote to near perfect proportions.

At 24 years old, she now commands the ranking and fees of a super model. Her image is known around the world in fashion. She has hosted television. She has even graced an airline side when Southwest Airlines painted an image of her on its 737 Boeing carrier.

In March this year Refaeli received the “World Style Award,” presented by the Women’s World Awards, for her “natural elegance, sense of style and compassion.”

In a controversial move some years ago Bar married (and just as quickly divorced) a family friend to avoid the mandatory military sevice to her country for all men and women 18 years or older.  Sidestepping khaki, Bar relocated to Los Angeles and has never looked back, saying, ‘I really wanted to serve (in the IDF), but I don’t regret not enlisting, because it paid off big time,’ she said. “That’s just the way it is, celebrities have other needs. I hope my case has influenced the army’

Now in LA, Bar is the new face of hip street and beach clothing line Hurley in a sizzling campaign that showcases her edginess and beauty.

Having done the 2010 photos already for Sports Illustrated Bar should be joyful and exuberant as she has a great year ahead it seems.

Beautifil bikinis like Bar’s

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Ooh-la-la!

Brigitte Bardot, or BB as she was known, or even just ‘Bardot’, practically invented the bikini.

More than that fateful 2-piece garment, she invented a whole niche industry for fashion, press and film representing an untapped age segment, that, up until her appearance on the cover of Paris magazine Elle in 1950 at age 16, was entirely ignored and unknown.

The world of teenagers.

It sounds so much prettier in French–the unexplored canvas of les juenes filles, or the ‘young girls’.  Up until this point in time, only women or children were so portrayed by the media–there was no fashion or magazines devoted to teenagers–there were only grown-up married women in tweedy Chanel suits and crisp Dior shirt-waisted dresses or chubby, red-cheeked school girls in serge uniforms of navy and grey. No pubescent girls like Bardot at the beach in a Hawaiian print bikini!

Even Nabokov’s tale of a child-woman, Lolita, who seduces a much, much older man would not yet be written (or banned) for a further five years!

BB created a fashion all her own; a look that overtook the formality and heavy construction of the Parisian couturiers ‘New Look’. Barefoot, bikini-clad, her wild, tangled mane of hair as frisky as a Camargue horse’s tail –she exuded insouciance, freedom, carefree-ness, juxtaposed alongside an aching, budding sexuality. Let’s put it this way–she was sex on legs.

And she dressed like that.  Like a jeune fille, a teenager– although at that time, mind you, there was no template for dressing like one.  A simple, fitted camisoled-cotton sun dress, a stripey sailor’s tee exposing both shoulders (now known as a Bardot neckline), boy shorts, Capri trousers–always girlie, flirty, never lewd, but casual, and always mostly barefoot–always unstudied and flung-together. In fact, her look was the opposite of say, someone like the divine Miss Dita von Teese whose every ensemble is a creative tour de force of planned elegant sexuality.

Bardot, with her nubile, seductive and completely natural sensuality–encased by her full, naturally pouty bee-stung lips, bed hair, perfectly erect posture from her training as a ballet dancer and her proportionately, womanly curves–caused indignation, unrest, arrests, event threats of immorality– when she was launched onto a bigger screen in her husband Roger Vadim’s 1956 film And God Created Woman.

Bardot, cast as the voracious, sexually wanton Juliete, became a cause celebre and went from jeune fille to God’s gift to Men. Her carioca dance scene where she drives the 3 main male characters into an erotic frenzy has become a defining moment in cinematography. She was adjudged by the editor of Paris-Match to be ‘immoral from head to toe’.  Of course, all this furore and clamor to ban her did was to elevate and promote her status to an even higher pedestal–that of budding sex goddess!

Bardot went on to make more than 50 films before ‘retiring’ and withdrawing to her beloved beaches of St. Tropez at age 39, devoting herself to animal and political causes.  She assiduously eschewed the glitz and artifice of high fashion, make-up, plastic surgery and the spotlight, instead choosing to follow her desires and pleasures on her own terms.

Of course the irony today is that all women want to dress like ‘jeunes filles’ forever, and all women want to look like Bardot.

Bardot bikinis

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